


thorns that burst from my skull in the night

by constanted



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dreams, Episode 69, Found Families, Gen, Memory Issues, [posts a fic that'll be jossed in an hour] i live in the fast lane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:29:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constanted/pseuds/constanted
Summary: The body sleeps. The self dreams.(or: dream, illusion, fifth level. you, or a willing creature you touch, enters a trance state, acting as a messenger.)





	thorns that burst from my skull in the night

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write critrole fic so obviously i post an episode coda 50 minutes before the next episode comes out. anyway i love these kids. i'm still gettin' used to their voices. i'm very sad about episode 69.

She dreams, on occasion, the body sleeping when it needs to and the mind wandering where it shouldn’t.

An unfortunate combination, really.

**i. immortelle, azalea witch hazel (eternal memory, take care, magic)**

She is in a library. She stares at a man and a cat. (Caleb, the self supplies. This is Caleb and Frumpkin. Her friends.)

“This is a dream,” Caleb says, and she nods, because she thinks that she knows. “We wanted to see you, assumed you were asleep by now. I am glad that it worked.”

The body twitches. It doesn’t like this at all. She doesn’t think she does either; this man set her and her friend on fire. This man helped kill Obann.

“There are a lot of very good books in here,” Caleb says. “It’s just ones I remember. But I remember a lot. Here,” and he hands her one, flowers pressed between the pages. Caleb smiles, soft. How can he smile?

She says nothing.

“Caduceus and Jester told me your flowers were for your wife. That is very lovely of you.”

“Don’t speak of her,” the Orphanmaker growls. The self recoils. The self wants to scream.

She tastes bile, and the body forces itself awake, away from this man who insists on her torture.

**ii. marjoram, larkspur, clover (joy, open-heart, think of me)**

“Yasha!” someone’s (Jester’s) voice screams across the distance, they are in a field tonight, of unnaturally bright flowers. Her shoulders feel tight. She does not trust this woman (Jester, how could she not trust _Jester_.) “I brought harps?” and a harp appears from nowhere. The Infernal plucks at its strings, and it makes a song that it shouldn’t, of notes that the Infernal is not playing.

“I hate you,” the Orphanmaker says, “I hate you, I hate you, you helped kill my friend. Tell the mage that he can stop sending you into my head, or I’ll—I’ll gut all of you twice, when I strike you down.”

“Not very threatening. I mean, I’ll already be dead, why gut me twice? It’ll just make things super messy, and you’ll have to, like, clean it up and stuff and then the Geas’ll wear off and you’ll be like, oh no, I gutted Jester twice, oh Stormlord, what do I do?” and then the Stormlord’ll come down with the Traveller and maybe even the Wildmother and the Knowing Mistress and they’ll save all of us and junk.”

The Infernal picks a flower. Its petals are a red-pink so bright that it makes the self’s eyes hurt. However much eyes matter in dreams. However much the eyes belong to the self.

The girl has moved on to something else. Tiny pictures of people pop up in the air as she speaks—a purple tiefling whose image makes her ache, all of Obann’s murderers, a dog, a queen, a halfling fellow. The Orphanmaker’s vision grows dark. She is angry.

“Leave me alone!”

And the girl’s voice is oddly measured. “Not right now, Yasha. You need to be with people who love—“

She forces herself awake. Back to it, then.

**iii. elderflower, sage, asphodel (faith, wisdom, regrets to the grave)**

“You’re going to tire yourself out if you keep waking up from your dreams after only a brief conversation. It’s not healthy."

Tonight, it is the firbolg, and tonight, she is not speaking. He doesn’t seem to mind. They’re in a graveyard (his home that he speaks seventy-percent fondly of), and he is lain beneath a tree strung with lights (their tree, that they grew), and she is standing in front of him. He is barely a foot taller than her, and yet, he seems to tower over her.

“We miss you, Yasha. We really do. I—I know your mind is hurting, right now, but—when you find us again, I will help you, I promise.”

Faint music plays behind them; skeletal animals, ribcages full with petals, skitter and fly around.

“I’ve never had friends before, Yasha, but I think that we are. Friends, I mean. I just want you to know. I can leave now, if you’d like.”

She nods.

He vanishes. So do the obelisks and stones, so does the tree, the skeletons, the flowers. And she rests. And she rests. And she rests.

The body thanks her. The self thanks him.

**iv. foxglove, pink carnation, thorn-apple (insecurity, a mother’s love, disguise)**

A halfling that the self is too lazy to remember the name of approaches her in this tiny cabin, and says, “I’m sorry.”

The Orphanmaker points a sword at her, and she disappears, leaving wilted flowers in her wake. Yasha picks them up. Tucks them into her hair. The body feels ill, and cannot say why.

Veth, the self says. Nott, the self says.

The body ignores it. The body ignores it, grinds a little blue flower in her pocket to shreds. The self feels ill, and cannot say why.

**v. white heather, ivy, snowdrop (protection, endurance, hope)**

“This is fuckin’ trippy,” says the monk. “Everybody else was acting like this was normal, and it’s super weird.”

Same library as the night with the mage. No cats, this time.

As if on cue, the cat arrives.

“I’m going to pet him,” Yasha says.

And Frumpkin’s fur is so soft, so kind, smells so sweet like honeysuckle, that the self almost _becomes_ again, that she almost feels—

This is a trap. It must be.

“We’re not looking for you. Not well, I guess. I feel shitty about that. But everyone’s said that your brain’s still fucked, what with these—dreams, and all. And—“

“You are murderers. You are—“

“Yasha. I need you to look at me.”

And the Orphanmaker sees her. Yasha thinks. The self thinks. As much as the self can think. As much as thinking belongs to the self. She sees her a lot.

**vi. gladiolus, anenome, lavender (honor, betrayal, distrust)**

“I don’t want to be here,” says the half-orc. His voice is wrong. He is surrounded by vines. So is she.

Her brain tells her than he is more of the oceanic type than the plant type, and she ignores it. She should not try and unravel this murderer.

Instead, she says this:

“Then leave.”

“Jester said that if I don’t make it five minutes, she’ll yell at me.”

“You killed someone far more powerful than you, and—“

“And I’m afraid of Jester. And if you were in your right goddamned mind, instead of being some insane cultist, you would be too. She can be very intimidating, Orphanmaker.”

It is her name, but it burns at her. It shouldn’t.

“Why did you lie to us?”

She does not respond.

“I don’t think I can forgive you.”

“And vice versa,” she says. “You _killed_ him.”

“And you almost fuckin’ killed me.”

“So we’re even.”

She lets him have the five minutes. She doesn’t know why.

She rests, and she worries. She has not worried in a long time, she doesn’t think. She has not _felt_ since Obann died, not felt anything but rage and determination. It’s an interesting change.

Maybe, one day, she’ll be able thank Fjord for it. And she smiles at the thought, pulls at the flowers in her hair, and the body does not.

The body does not reciprocate very often at all.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ yahooanswer  
> title from minimall's "pyrrhic victory"  
> comment if ya want, kudo if ya want.


End file.
